Hello everybody,
Here is the latest news from Coventry. We have worked hard on our bathroom and the front and rear gardens for the last two month. And unfortunately, not all went as we had hoped. To start with, the garden had some problems, snails. They have eaten most of the vegetables we had planted or sown. Luckily we don't have to survive on it, and after three attemps the beans are now visuable. Secondly, the bathroom; the installation of the bathroom suit and tiles went good. Although we thought that the man who did the installation also would deal with the ceiling and would change the place of the light switch cord, which hang just behind the door. The first problem we could solve ourself by painting it, and the second also more or less, by attaching a hook in the doorpost. But then the big problem started. To explain this we first have to tell you how the water system in many English houses is organized. We have a boiler tank in the bathroom that stores warm water for washing and for heating. For both systems we have also 2 separate tanks on the loft to fill these different systems. Filling of these tanks is regulated by a ball valve, like the one in most toilet containers,. To prevent overflowing of these tanks on the loft an overflow pipe runs from the loft to the outside, just under the gutter. Maybe you guess it already, one morning we noticed that water was dripping from the roof on a sunny day..... My first reaction was to lower the water level in the tanks but with no luck. We noticed that it leaked specially at night and early morning. So in the middle of the night I was sitting in the loft with a light, staring in the water tank to see what happens. And slowly I understood were the water came from. Not from the mains but via the outlet to the tank in the bathroom. That would mean that somehow water from the mains was mixing with warm water in the tank. We just had installed two mix taps, to replace the famous English single taps on the sink and bath, so my theory was that one of these taps was leaking internal. We also noticed that we could here water hissing in the bath tap. Now I could jump high and low, scream, etc, neither the man who installed everything, nor the engineers from a second company believed me. No, it has to be the ball valve. Taps don't leak internal, only they can drip, and they did not....... Fortunately for us, a few days later they started to drip, sometimes more and sometimes less, depending on the time of day and therefore, probably on the water pressure in the mains. Because they were now visually dripping, the shop we had bought them from, contacted the factory who told them that they had heard once about this problem and that we need a valve on the mains to regulate the water pressure entering the house. Now we are still waiting for them to install this (and to find out who will pay for it) and then we finally hope that the problem is solved.
In between Kees ' parents have visited us for 2 weeks. The last time they were in England we were still living in Birmingham. So now they have an idea how we live in Coventry, how the house is organized and how the water system is in an English house. We showed them besides Coventry and Leicester, the already known attractions of the Black Country Museum, Warwick castle and the Automobile museum. I think they liked it. They had only some bad luck with the weather, a lot of rain. Luckily there was world cup football on TV (although considering the absence of Dutch team and the shameful display of Polish representation, we weren't very enthusiastic supporters this year).......And of course many programs for Queen's Golden Jubilee. There were two concerts in Buckingham Palace on this occasion, the classical concert and the pop one. It attracted about million people to London, so we did not even try to get there.
Now we prepare slowly for summer holidays. We hope at least that there will be some summer in England as we want to camp in the Lake District. It is said to be very beautiful. We are looking forward!
Ania and Kees